


the old home calls

by spacenarwhal



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Feelings, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Romantic Gestures, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 04:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: “I found us a place.” Foggy answers breathlessly, voice pitched slightly higher than usual.“Aren’t we already in the place you found for us?” Matt asks, half-smiling, still standing on the threshold of the kitchen.Foggy shifts, the leather uppers of his shoes squeaking as he redistributes his weight. “A place that doesn’t smell like salami.”





	the old home calls

It feels like they’ve barely moved their boxes into the room over the deli when Foggy walks in, breathing hard and heart thrumming erratically against the backs of his ribs. It takes a moment for Matt to place it as excitement rather than fear—it sets Matt’s nerves on edge, that familiar dread knotted in a sense of inevitability, _too good to last_ —but Foggy’s voice is happy when he calls out good morning from the doorway. Foggy isn’t entirely devoid of fear Matt realizes a beat later, but it’s easier to give in to curiously rather than pessimism now that Foggy’s fully inside their office, the door shut behind him. It’s a false sense of security, Matt knows but it’s enough for now, listening to the stuttering exhale of Foggy’s sigh as he catches his breath.

“What’s got you all in a tizzy this morning, Foggy?” Karen asks, voice bright and clear as the scent of a ripe orange. It helps smooth down the frayed edges of Matt’s unease, Karen’s mood helping Matt round out his own impression of Foggy’s well-being.

“I found us a place.” Foggy answers breathlessly, voice pitched slightly higher than usual. Yes, Matt decides, there’s definitely some degree of trepidation caught in the tangled net of Foggy’s voice, but for once the world isn’t ending.  

“Aren’t we already in the place you found for us?” Matt asks, half-smiling, still standing on the threshold of the kitchen.

Foggy shifts, the leather uppers of his shoes squeaking as he redistributes his weight. “A place that doesn’t smell like salami.” He amends, light-hearted despite the nervousness still blaring throughout his body.

Matt rests against the doorway, listens to the tremor of Foggy’s pulse even as Karen says, “Color me intrigued.” Honest curiosity colors her voice and Foggy moves closer sets his briefcase down on the corner of Matt’s desk. Karen stands with a creak of her chair, her boots clipping over the floorboards as she approaches Foggy.

There’s the shuffle of papers as Foggy removes something from his briefcase. He hands something—flat, thin, a file folder most likely—to Karen, but catches Matt off guard completely when he holds one out to Matt.

“Foggy—” Karen’s voice is lit with confusion even before Matt’s run his fingers over the first line of Braille on the thick page.

“It’s our lease.” Foggy says, his heart a marching band now, ringing in Matt’s ears even as Matt’s own heart accelerates as he reads the address specified on the paper.

His brow furrows, his mouth falls slightly open, incredulous.

“How—”

Foggy shrugs, uneasy, shoulders wiggling as though there were an itch caught under his skin.

“Couldn’t just let the place go without a fight, Matty.” Foggy says but all Matt hears in his heart, beating true.

-

They have a big enough window of time in their afternoon to visit the soon-to-be new offices of _Nelson, Murdock, and Page_.

The gym hasn’t changed since they were last there, though someone has taken it upon themselves to board up the window pane Matt broke when he first took refuge here. It smells of disuse, the air slightly damp and sour with mildew, rancid sweat that’ll be impossible to ever fully remove.

“Whoa.” Karen’s voice echoes in the cavernous room, bounces back off the rafted ceiling, warbles off the thin windows.

The weather is turning warmer outside but it’s still cold inside, makes Matt’s nose drip, his throat tight as he walks around the abandoned boxing ring.

 “Remodeling this place is going to cost a small fortune.” Karen is saying, pragmatic as always, her heartbeat tipping towards something troubled. She doesn’t mean for Matt to hear, voice low across the room, but Foggy’s pulse quickens. He clears his throat significantly. “Uh, I had someone look at it. Won’t be too bad. And that’s not even taking into account the possibility of leaving some of this stuff behind. It can be, like, our thing.”

Matt presses his hand to the ancient face of a locker, cold and rusted under his palm. (He listens for Dad’s voice, but it’s not here now, not like before, just a whisper of a memory.)

Karen drops her voice lower. “Foggy, I get you want to do a nice thing, but hanging on to the past, it isn’t—it isn’t always the right thing to do.”

Matt wonders when she found out. The information isn’t hard to find, especially not if you’re determined to find it. He half-smiles to himself. She really was cut out for the job.

“We can’t work out of the deli forever, Kare.” Foggy says good-naturedly. “And we don’t have to stay here forever either. But there are offices just down the hall we can use without having to do a lot to them, and extra bonus, no one who comes here will have any memory of when I was a baby and ran around naked.” Foggy’s pulse rises, just a beat quicker, and Matt knows it for what it is.

Karen laughs, the sound still slightly brittle, and Foggy loosens his shoulders, tells her to go check out the rooms down the hall. Foggy comes towards Matt slow, his footsteps pronounced in a way they haven’t been since before Foggy found out the truth about Matt.

“Whatcha think, buddy?” Foggy’s voice is careful, so careful, like it was back in school, when they were still getting to know one another.

Matt swallows, heart in his throat. “This place isn’t going to be cheap, Fog.” He says, “Karen’s right. We can’t hold on to the past just because letting go is hard.” His hands curl inside his pockets.

Foggy’s voice catches somewhere in his chest, but he breathes out, slow, “I know that, Matty. But you can’t move forward without remembering where you started from right?”

Matt opens his mouth. For as long as he can remember, he’s always been on the offensive, ready to start with a jab and end with a knock out punch before his opponent even knows the fight’s underway. But Foggy’s known him long enough to know that, Matt doesn’t know how or why he forgets it, his teeth clicking together when Foggy cuts him off, his prior hesitation softened with conviction. “I’m not just talking about your dad, Matty. I mean—this place means something to me too. Not what it means to you, I know, but I don’t want to see it go either.” The tone of Foggy’s voice changes, it dips, the shape of it familiar in Matt’s ears. (“I don’t want to lose you.” Matt heard it then too, could almost trace the groves of it the way he might follow the trail of Foggy’s lifeline across his palm with a fingertip.)

Matt licks at his bottom lip, feels like he’s been knocked off balance by the sheer force of his longing. It isn’t safe to give into the pull, to let him drag him under, but it’s enticing, always has been.  

“What’s Marci have to say about your newest investment?”

It’s petty of him, Matt knows it is.

In the last month Foggy’s come into the office smelling of ginger and nutmeg flower, not the new scent of orchids and jasmine that Matt’s come to recognize as Marci. The cologne is new, but there are other familiar markers entangled within it, the signature scent of the hard tap water that pours out of the ancient pipes in Foggy’s building and the faint scent of patchouli given off by the dryer sheets Foggy favors when washing his bedding.

Foggy sighs, “C’mon Matty, we’re pass this aren’t we? You know Marci doesn’t have any say in what I do or don’t do with my money.” Foggy doesn’t falter, but it’s a near thing, “Not anymore.”

Matt thinks about apologizing. He’s used to destroying his own relationships, but he’s never directly ruined Foggy’s for him. It isn’t a hard situation to read. He disappeared and Foggy put his life together the way he’d always talked of doing. Foggy deserves those things, the corner office and expensive fabrics and someone to share it all with. Things Matt can’t offer, not before, not now.

The right thing to do has never changed, but Matt is pass trying to give Foggy up. He’s tried it, more than once, and each time Matt does what it takes to keep him just a while longer. Foggy changed his life for Matt, not just this time but since they’ve met, he’s made room for Matt where there wasn’t room before and when Matt came back from the dead, Foggy up-turned the new life he’d made for himself without Matt there to drag him down and threw his lot back in with him. Matt wonders if it was too much for Marci to accept. It feels like too much for Matt to accept some days, but he doesn’t have it in him not to accept it.

Matt ducks his head, embarrassed. “Sorry, I just—didn’t want to assume.”

Foggy chuckles lightly, “Wow, that’s, like, character development.”  

Matt hangs his head.

He knocks his knuckles against the locker door, the sound bounds back towards him, ripples throughout the room.

"Thanks." He says, wants Foggy to hear everything he means by the word and knows it's too small an act to get everything he wants to across. 

"Don't mention it," Foggy replies evenly and Matt knows he understands. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year!
> 
> I started writing this story for this scene but then didn't know how to include it so I'm just going to drop it here.
> 
> “He bought you a gym?” Jessica Jones muses, incredulous, the scent of Jim Beam thick on her breath. 
> 
> “Rented, technically.” Matt corrects her, sipping his own drink. 
> 
> Jessica scoffs, “Oh, no big deal then. My mistake.”
> 
> Luke chuckles, “Most guys buy a ring.” 
> 
> On Matt’s other side, Danny snorts. “He kind of did.” Matt ignores them all and keeps drinking. That doesn't mean they miss how red his ears go.


End file.
